The innovative use of technology could ease the stress of the nursing staff shortage affecting South African hospitals by assisting over-worked nurses to administer the right treatment.
While the nursing fraternity should concentrate on addressing the staff shortage through recruitment and retention strategies, IT should be used to improve the performance of nursing and quality of care, while reducing the cost of care delivery.
Bar-coding is helping to document transactions, track inventory and capture changes at the time of treatment or administration.
Lorna Powe, health expert, Computer Sciences Corporation in SA
Today, fewer nurses are expected to do more with less time. Technology can help reduce errors - be they medication, prescription transcription, order, administration or dosing errors - and can simplify the care process.
Technology can also minimise duplication of work and patient information, improve communication, improve patient care documentation compliance and provide additional decision support tools.
Examples of how IT has limited medical errors include improving access to accurate, timely information; using physician order entry systems that provide real-time alerts; using bar-coding for positive identification of patients, drugs and records; and as decision support systems such as reminders and alerts.
Handheld wireless devices have made it possible to access information and messaging anywhere and anytime. Hand-written notes can now be translated into the computer and easily read by other staff. Likewise, bar-coding is helping to document transactions, track inventory and capture changes at the time of treatment or administration.
A US hospital is easing the stress on its nursing staff by providing patients with a patient-specific, bar-coded ID bracelet. The nurse scans the band using a Palm Pilot and is able to determine not only the list of medications that have and should be administered to the patient, but is also able to check the `five rights` - the right medication, patient, time, dose and route.
Using technology is allowing these nurses more time to do what they do best - caring for patients.
Preventable medical errors in the US currently exceed deaths from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer and AIDS, a situation that costs American hospitals an estimated $17 billion to $29 billion a year. This figure includes the expense of additional care necessitated by medical errors, lost income and household productivity, and disability.
South African hospitals should learn from the experiences of US and Britain. Overseas hospitals are also affected by nursing staff shortages and many of them have successfully addressed their staffing problems by investing in IT and doing away with antiquated, paper-based systems which only aggravate the burden on medical staff.
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